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Payments And Security

We Authorise Your Payment Card Only When We Are About To Despatch Your Order

When you place an order with us we do not immediately charge your payment card. Your card is authorised as a "deferred" transaction, which does nothing more than check your account for the funds required for your order. When we are coming close to despatching your goods we will then proceed to "release" the funds, which will actually take the money from your card. The funds are released by a real person, who properly asesses the status of your order before proceeding

Our shopping cart uses the latest 256-Bit SSL (secure socket layer) encryption. Within the encrypted area we have a GeoTrust certificate installed on the server, which fully verifies that the website's SSL is working correctly. You can click on the padlock within your browser window to check the location and status of the certificate

We Use Paypoint As Our Payment Service Provider

We use Paypoint.net as our payment service provider. Paypoint are responsible for making the connection between our shopping cart and our acquiring bank when your payment card is authorised. Paypoint is a FTSE 250 listed company and renowned for its extremely reliable and secure internet payment platform, which allows our customers to make payments with confidence, and for us to use their fraud prevention tools to safeguard ourselves and the public interest

Our Payment Processing Arrangements Are Fully PCI-DSS Compliant

The "Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard" has strict guidelines on how customer payment data is transferred between servers and stored. Every online retailer with a professional merchant account is obliged to comply with PCI-DSS regulations. We use Paypoint.net's server to process customer payments, so there is actually no transfer of sensitive data across servers; it is dealt with solely by Paypoint, who are audited quarterly to ensure PCI-DSS compliance

Thank you

Thank you for reading our "payments and security" page. If you have any feedback or questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch. Alternatively there is an FAQ section below which may be of use

Frequently Asked Questions

WHY DO YOU NOT ACCEPT AMEX CARDS ?

There are 2 primary reasons for this - cost and usage. American Express have approached us to use their payment medium, but we don't feel their charges are in harmony with the value we aim to deliver to our customers. Combined with the low user rate relative to mainstream payment methods, we find it difficult to justify adopting the AMEX system at the current time

WHY DO YOU NOT ACCEPT PAYPAL PAYMENTS ?

We are aware that many people like to use Paypal for the ease of transacting between ecommerce stores, but we do not feel that the operating terms of Paypal are in the interests of our customers. The processing charges are very high compared to the professional service offered through our acquiring bank, Lloyds Cardnet, which would work against our ethic of delivering the best value to our customers. We also feel that the Paypal medium hasn't proved to be as robust as a professional service in protecting the British consumer. A retailer with disingenuous intentions finds it relatively easy to set up a merchant account with Paypal compared to a UK acquiring bank, which verifies the legal status and operating procedures of their participating retailers

WHY SHOULD I TRUST THE SSL CERTIFICATE ON YOUR WEBSITE JUST BECAUSE YOU SAY YOU HAVE ONE ?

We see what you mean in terms of the word "certificate". Everyone has a certificate for something, don't they! However, with SSL certificates it's impossible to make a false or over-inflated claim. If our shopping cart didn't have an SSL certificate installed your browser would either refuse to render the page, or warn you of the issue. All browser software providers ensure that they only allow credible organisations to issue SSL certificates